GMWDA recycling campaign aims to cut confusion

The Greater Manchester Waste Disposal Authority has today (October 18) launched a recycling campaign aimed at clearing up residents' confusion over what material they can and cannot recycle at the kerbside.

The 18-month ‘Recycle for Greater Manchester' drive was kicked off by comedian Dave Spikey at an event to coincide with the opening of the £12 million Longley Lane materials recycling facility (MRF) at Sharston, South Manchester.

Material sent to Longley Lane will be sorted by waste management firm Viridor under its long-term waste and recycling contract with the Greater Manchester Waste Disposal Authority (GMWDA). Viridor is one-half of the Viridor Laing consortium, which signed a £3.8 billion with the GMWDA to handle its waste for the next 25 years in April 2009 (see letsrecycle.com story).

As part of the communications campaign, residents in the Greater Manchester area will receive an information pack setting out what items are commonly put out for recycling by mistake, as well as a sticker identifying what waste is recyclable.

At the heart of the campaign is combating residents' confusion about recycling, with the GMWDA stressing that material packaging labelled ‘recyclable' does not necessarily mean that that is the case locally.

The GMWDA handles waste disposal on behalf of nine local authorities – Bolton, Bury, Manchester, Oldham, Rochdale, Salford, Stockport, Tameside and Trafford.

Speaking at the event, Bolton native Dave Spikey said: “It's a tiny bit like a sign near me that says ‘New Road Layout, Use Both Lanes', which when I do really annoys the other drivers; so that can't be right. I also recently tried to assemble a plastic table and the instructions said ‘Insert legs up bottom' but that's another story for another day.

“Similarly, the cook-in-the-bag rice that advised me to ‘stand in boiling water for 10 minutes'; I gave up after 12 seconds. So what I'm saying is this, just because it says ‘recyclable', don't take it literally because it's not necessarily always the case here in Greater Manchester.”

Campaign

Commenting on the launch of the campaign, a spokeswoman for Viridor told letsrecycle.com: “It has come out naturally from discussions between the contractor Viridor Laing, the GMWDA and the district councils, as waste collection authorities.

“And, over some time the waste collection authorities have been doing some communications on collections and we need to spread that across the partnership, so it would help to have a campaign across all the partnership.”

The information pack is set to be supported by material on the 'Recycle for Greater Manchester' website along with press releases and notices issued to local media outlets by Viridor Laing and the GMWDA.

“The main thing is going to be the information pack,” said the spokeswoman. “We are going with the local media to do continued press releases through local press and working with the districts to look at things like call centres and crews, to see if there is any additional work that could be done.”

Viridor declined to divulge the cost of the communications campaign.

The occasion also marked the opening of the 90,000 tonnes-a-year capacity Longley Lane MRF, which completed commissioning in August and is designed to handle glass, cans and plastic bottles collected from the Greater Manchester area (see letsrecycle.com story).